Bill Battle, businessman: from football through the window to licensing and beyond

View full sizeOn his first day as Alabama's new athletics director last month, Bill Battle came to one of the Crimson Tide's spring football practices. (AL.com/Vasha Hunt)

TUSCALOOSA, Alabama - When the door shut on Bill Battle's college football coaching career, a window opened into the business world.

But he never expected to work for ... what? A window company? And he never expected to work ... where?

It started with a conversation with Alabama coach Paul Bryant, who was looking after one of his former players.

"When I got out of coaching, Coach Bryant said, 'Do you know Larry Striplin?'" Battle said. "I said yeah. He said, 'He wants you to come work for him in Selma.'

"I thought to myself, 'I don't think I'm going to Selma and working for a window company.'"

This was after the 1976 college football season. Battle had been dismissed after seven years as Tennessee's head coach.

Striplin was a former Birmingham-Southern basketball player. Battle was the son of the Birmingham-Southern athletics director. Striplin went on to coach basketball at Belmont College, where he started the program. Before that, Battle played on a YMCA football team for 11-13-year-olds. Striplin was his coach.

"When I was a kid, I had watched Larry play basketball," Battle said. "I knew he was in the glass business, because I spoke at the Birmingham Quarterback Club one year, and he picked me up. He was the president of the club, and he went out and showed me his operation. But I had lost track of him."

Striplin had not lost track of Battle.

"Larry called, and I said, 'I'm not going to do this,'" Battle said. "He said, 'Well, come play golf. I'll send a plane.' I came down and saw what he was doing, and it was really neat. I ended up doing that for six years."

The window business opened a door to become Bryant's agent, which opened a window to an industry that Battle more or less started: collegiate licensing.

Years later, this visionary sold his company for millions of dollars and retired.

MEET ALABAMA'S
NEW ATHLETICS DIRECTORA three-part series

I. Wednesday: The player | Bill Battle was a slow lineman at Birmingham's West End High School who blossomed and then played end for Paul Bryant at Alabama. That opened doors and windows for the future.II. Thursday: The coach |He coached at Tennessee, against Bryant, but first he worked for Bud Wilkinson, Paul Dietzel and Doug Dickey. He was a pioneer of computer analysis in college football.III. Friday: The businessman | He succeeded in big business, retired as a multimillionaire and now has come out of retirement to succeed former teammate Mal Moore as Alabama's athletics director.

Last month, he came out of retirement to succeed Mal Moore, a former Alabama teammate, as Alabama's athletics director.

Where would Battle be if he hadn't gone to Selma?

Back in that day, back in that place, business was good and getting better.

"About the third or fourth year, Larry sold this massive job in Saudi Arabia," Battle said. The first of four phases was worth $42 million. "He brought back a check for $8 million in front money. The gross sales of our window company were $5 million from the year before. We had a tiger by the tail."

Striplin started buying the Saudi Arabian company.

"He was one of these guys that if he had a dollar, he'd borrow five against it and leave it all out on the table," Battle said. "That wasn't the way I was raised. I was raised that if you couldn't pay cash, don't buy it.

"So we ended up with a lot of businesses."

One of them was the Otey Crisman Putter Company.

"Otey Crisman was a great man, an Alabama Sports Hall of Fame guy and got to be a good friend," Battle said. "Larry poured some money in it, and it wasn't working, and he was told to either get in or get out of the golf business."

By then, Battle was the president of the window company.

"I've got my hands full," Battle said. "Then Larry said, 'I've got a meeting with the Jack Nicklaus group down in Palm Beach, and I want you to go with me.'"

This was in 1979. The meeting was about licensing.

"I'd never heard of licensing at that time," Battle said. "We flew down. Before we left, we had acquired the licensing rights to the Golden Bear logo and gloves and socks and accessories and eyewear on an exclusive basis, which was sold to the ophthalmic trade, and then some other stuff on a nonexclusive basis. We hired a guy who did understand licensing. We'd talk after work."

View full sizeBill Battle is introduced at halftime of Alabama's NIT quarterfinal basketball game against Maryland. (AL.com/Vasha Hunt)

Battle learned that he wanted to learn more.

"I was really fascinated by the business," he said.

Among the items licenses with the Golden Bear logo were polarized lenses.

"The first year, we paid Jack $75,000. I thought, 'Holy cow! What a great way to make money,'" Battle said. "We thought we were really special.

"So we got invited to the Nicklaus partnership meetings, and we found out we were by far his smallest licensee, but he liked us. He'd say, 'Send me two dozen polarized lenses. I've got a group going on a fishing trip.' I thought, 'Wow, Golden Bear will generate money for the Nicklaus family for generations after he's gone.'"

One of Battle's duties as president of the window company was to run board meetings.

"I was nervous about that," Battle said. "A lot of general contractors and other people knew the business a whole lot better than I did. I had to prepare hard for those meetings."

Another duty was to swing by the Holiday Inn in Selma and pick up a board member who would come in the night before.

That board member was Bryant.

"I was surprised that he came to board meetings during the season, but he did," Battle said.

At the end of the 1980 season, Bryant was nine victories away from becoming college football's all-time winningest coach. In January 1981, he came to Selma.

"We were walking up the steps to the board meeting," Battle recalled, "and he said, 'I'm going to change agents. The guys in New York aren't doing anything for me.'"

Battle's first reaction?

"I was shocked that he had an agent."

The second reaction?

"I couldn't even think about the board meeting," Battle said. "I was thinking, 'Holy cow! Here was Knute Rockne about to change agents.' I thought, 'We've got this little company, and maybe we can do for Coach Bryant what Golden Bear has done for Jack Nicklaus.'

"After the meeting, I went back and said, 'Coach, I don't know anything about being an agent, but I know about you, and we've got this little company. I think we can help you.'

"He said, 'Aw, I've got nothing to sell. The best in the business have been trying to sell me. All I want is somebody to take my requests for speaking engagements and tell them I can't come.'

"I said, 'I can handle that.'"

Bryant signed an exclusive agency agreement with Battle and company.

"Coach Bryant said, 'I don't want to deal with anybody but you,' and I'm still running the window company," Battle said. "I had to screen all these deals and take them to Coach Bryant. As the season started to approach, people wanted to use Alabama's logos. We didn't have the rights to do that."

One day Battle was on the Alabama campus to see Bryant and went to the administration building to ask where the licensing department was.

"Nobody knew what I was talking about," Battle said. "I went to four or five different offices. I finally ended up in the purchasing office, meeting with Finus Gaston. Finus said, 'We don't have a licensing program.'"

Gaston now is the Alabama athletic department's chief financial officer.

"I said, 'Well, is anybody in the university environment doing what the NFL and Major League Baseball are doing?'" Battle said. "Finus said, 'No, but there's a few talking about it.'"

Battle saw his big opportunity.

"I went home and said, 'I don't know if we can do this, but I understand how university administrators think,'" he said. "'I know one school is not going to let another school manage their business. Whoever does it has got to be neutral, and I don't see anybody in this space other than the NCAA, and I'm not sure the NCAA can do it. If somebody's going to do it, it might as well be us.'

"The entrepreneurial spirit in our company was, 'Go for it.' So I said, 'Well, get somebody else to run this window company and let me do it.' We ended up signing Alabama and Ole Miss and seven of the ACC schools."

This was the beginning of Battle's Collegiate Licensing Company, which was known as Golden Eagle Enterprises before it moved in 1984 to Atlanta.

In 2007, Battle sold the company to IMG for more than $100 million. IMG was Bryant's agent before Battle came along.

Now, the industry that Battle developed generates $4.3 billion per year.

More than the money, Battle treasures his relationship with Bryant.

"As a player, you never socialized with Coach Bryant," Battle said. "Usually if you talked to him, you were in trouble. ...

"As a coach, he loved to be around his players that were coaches. Every year, he had a place down on Lake Martin, and he would have a thing for his coaches. We'd come in and we'd play golf and draw X's and O's and have more fun. And then he started having more players that he was having to compete with. ... We were always friendly, but we never could be friends in the Alabama-Tennessee relationship.

"When I worked with him in business, we talked about anything and everything. It was so great. We talked about X's and O's and people. Everything. Anything. So I got to know him at three different levels.

"What was amazing to me was how much time he spent helping other people. In many cases, they never even knew he helped them. That's the mark of a man, to me."